for women who are difficult to love
by xshedreamsinredx
Summary: Sebastian/Kenna. Post 1x16. So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog of non-definitive acts.


**Characters: **Sebastian/Kenna**  
****Fandom: **Reign**  
Warnings: **Rated T**  
Notes: **Set post 1x16. Sebastian-centric. I wrote this before watching 1x17, so this is a mix of headcannons. Please don't hate me for this.

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**for women who are difficult to love**

_"Science—_

_beyond pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone,  
__every time I make love for love's sake alone,_

_I betray you."_

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It isn't a love story—

There is no love piecing back the fissures in his heart. There is no hatred moulding cruelty and ripping his words apart. There is no ending. There is no start.

It isn't a love story, _it's a farce._

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In the beginning, he resents Kenna. Resents being forced to take her as his wife, being forced to carve a space out for her in his room, being forced to live a life that didn't necessarily entangle with Mary's, and being forced to stay away from her for the reason that he is married, and although blaming Kenna for it all isn't sensible in the least, it is easy.

She resents him too. On the uneventful day of their wedding, she had pled with his father to set her free even as he recited his vows, when she had seemed revolted to even rest her eyes on him and had shrunk back from the slightest touch of his hand.

It had grated on his nerves. If she didn't want to be his wife, hold the _oh so_ sought after title of _lady of hunt and horse_, then he didn't ask for her either. He wanted nothing to do with her, he wanted Mary and Kenna would dwindle into nothingness, like flowers pressed in between pages and forgotten, in comparison to his brother's wife. Always.

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Behind the closed door of his chambers, her tears run dry to give way to quiet but persistent snivelling. "It's so small," her voice sounds discordant in his ears, hitting the jarring note between disbelief and distress. "You don't even have a mirror in here."

He sighs as he collapses into a chair across from her, neglects her attempt to draw her legs back in order to offer some space to his. He wants to say something cruel then. Something about _not wanting to touch girls like her_. It would be a lie. Or something crueller. Something about _not wanting to touch girls touched by his father_. It could be another lie.

His mouth sours with the effort it takes to not provide his thoughts with a voice. "I will have your vanity brought in."

She nods fervently. "And my bed too I'm not sharing one with you."

He barks out a laugh nothing short of wolfish. "If you actually had that many reserves in the first place, you wouldn't be here."

Nails in her gown. The fabric stretches and rips on the sharp edges. Hair a dark veil over her face. It's the tears she tries to hide. "You," she says and stops, "you don't get to call me a whore."

She doesn't even get it right then. You don't get to call me a whore _because you are a bastard yourself_, he thinks she should have said instead, _or else_ _you accuse your own mother of the same_. It would have made her case in point much more considerable rather than plain moot.

"We," there is an inflection let loose in her tone, nothing more, nothing less, "are not sharing a bed."

"Fine," he shrugs agreeably, "you can sleep on the floor."

She grits her teeth, settles back under the covers in a grand gesture of frustration. But, he is not his father; he can't bring himself to be bothered by her temper tantrums.

Their marriage goes unconsummated. She doesn't sleep on the floor though.

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The king is mad, getting madder still by each dragging turn of the moon. He commands banquets for no reason other than he is the king. If he wants to find another excuse to avoid medicinal treatment and to find new opportunities to whore around, he will.

He watches Mary and Francis amidst the dance floor, laughing and falling over each other. They are just so sickeningly in love. It is disturbing.

From the corner of his eye, he catches the shadow of his approaching father's silhouette. "I had thought marrying you to lady Kenna would help your mind off of Mary."

His grip on the wine glass strains. "Well, you thought wrong."

"It's a shame then," his father concedes, thinly veiled madness dancing in his eyes, "a perfectly good girl was wasted on you. If it vexes you so much I will try and think of something _special_."

He steals the crystal glass out of his grasp, swallows the content down in a gulp, half of the red wine dribbles down his chin and stains his robes. The king seems unperturbed by the light of his recent actions.

"Speaking of, I have missed lady Kenna. Have you been keeping her that busy in the bed?" An ugly grin sneaks on to corner of his mouth. "It's unimaginable how far she can bend. Isn't?"

He feels the bile rise to his throat. The words rip away at his sanity. "_Father_, please."

"Oh all right," he dismisses him with a wave of hand, "if you insist on being so secretive, you can get out of here already."

He didn't need to be told twice.

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He stumbles upon her changing clothes once.

The buttons on her gown rest halfway undone and she struggles to lace the fabric on her bare back. He looks away from the indecently exposed skin but can't seem to keep his treacherous eyes off her nearly long enough. "Need a hand?"

She starts, he can tell by the jump of her shoulders, and turns towards him abruptly. The gown gapes over her chest and she has to up hold a hand in front to keep it from slipping further down her shoulders. "Are you offering."

It's not a question if she already knows the answer.

He reaches out in response, swerves her around with a practised sort of ease. Even in the dimmed light of his quarters he can make out the slightness of her frame, the bend and curve of her spine, the starkness of her flesh. His fingers cramp with the effort it takes to span up to the buttons, fasten them along upto the nape of her neck, and not touch her.

"I don't love you," She announces, sharp and cutting. Maybe it is easier to say that out loud when she is not looking at him, when she can't seem to draw out the likeness in him and his father. "I may never come to love you."

He doesn't expect her to, he thinks. "I don't expect you to," he says.

"I know you love Mary," She admits, hurriedly, as if she is dispelling a confession to a cleric. It is laughable. He doesn't know a single individual who knows him and does not know he loves Mary. "I don't require you to be faithful to me."

He reels her back into him then. Traps her arms against her sides with the forceful curve of his arm around her waist, and burrows into her until he can feel her brittle bones next to the sharp angles of his own body. A faint scream slips past the crevice of her mouth at the sudden impact but she doesn't struggle in his hold.

Lips in her hair, he lets out a strained, manic laugh. "You're my wife." It might be an explanation. It might be a demand. "You took a vow." It might be a litany of things he can't even begin to explain. "I hold you to be faithful to me even if you do not feel the need for such requirements."

He feels her tremble against him and steps back. Release her before she can write him off for being as mad as his father.

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See, the thing with Kenna is she dreams of knights and lives her life in pretty songs that cannot withstand the severity of pragmatism. She imagines herself quite the cunning one. Acts on flights of fancies which ensure nothing apart from her perusal as a pawn in a game of chess she doesn't belong in.

"I wish I could run." She whispers in the dead of the witching hour. Words a little blurred around the edges. She has drowned out her sorrows in one too many cups of wine again. "Run to a faraway place where I am a speck of nothing, till I'm a smudge in the memory of courtiers, a girl forgotten and lost."

"Bored of me already?" He asks in a last ditch attempt to lighten the atmosphere. He has always hated confrontations heavy with meaning, words that could add up to mean something substantial. "Your lord husband?"

She chuckles humorlessly. "What do you care? You love Mary."

There is a question and a self supplied answer in the statement itself. He doesn't quite know what counter argument she needs from him.

"Mary loves Francis more." He says instead, reiterates the words from the back of his head, a residual bitterness underlining the flesh memory.

"I'm sorry." She says. Struggles to blink away the heaviness in her eyes.

He allows himself to smile. "You couldn't sound more insincere if you tried."

She lets out a soundless yawn, bears her head on the edge of his bony shoulder. "I'm sorry about that too."

He hears the chirp of grasshoppers in the backdrop of the castle, the imagined static and hum of the night before he hears her speak again. "Don't _you _ever wish to run away?"

He steadies her against him, binds an arm around her waist to keep her from losing balance. He pretends at deliberation ahead of answering. Voice lowered down to an almost muted note, he admits: _"All the time."_

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Days, weeks, and eons later he returns to his room to find her crying silently.

Sitting at her vanity, she has her head turned away from the mirror as if in disgust of her own reflection, unable to meet or avoid his eyes. "What is it?"

He is crouched down on his knees before her, touch tipped under the side of her chin. His fingers stretch out to tuck mussed up hair behind her ear. "What is it, Kenna?"

"Your father has asked to see me," he can almost weigh out her helplessness with his own, can almost feel her anger sink and settle in his own skin, can almost taste the frustration of her tears on his own tongue, "in his chambers."

Her hands twist into the fabric of his shirt, desperate, in a need to hold on to something that gives way under the string of her feeble bleats. "Please, I don't want to." She begs frantically. "Please, please, please, Sebastian."

His name sounds different on her tongue than it used to. It is coloured more with faith and less with disdain. "You don't have to." He tells her and it is not a lie. The gaps in his head are filled with her pleas and possibilities too frail to voice. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

"But the king-"

"Damn the king," his palm splayed against her cheek, he leans in, "I will protect you against him with my life if I have to."

She quiets down for a lost fraction of eternity, surprised. "But why?"

"Because you are my wife." He answers, slightly distracted by the sudden flush of her skin, "I took a vow and I intend to keep it."

She blinks rapidly, attempts to thinks up an offset argument, and opens her mouth-

He swallows her words before she can speak.

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_It isn't a love story, it's a farce._

Sometimes, he lets the thought crumble under the weight of his mouth against hers, drowns it out with the drone of her breathy moans, tears it apart as easily as the silk of her dress.

It doesn't take as much effort as one might imagine.

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**fin.**

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**End Notes: **Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it half as much as I enjoyed writing it. I'd really appreciate it if you could take a few seconds out of your precious time and leave me a review, tell me whether you liked it or hated it.


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